Without reforms, retirees to face dwindling funds

“As this report shows, leaving Medicare and Social Security on autopilot and allowing them to continue to grow beyond their means is no longer an option,” said Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the senior Republican on the committee that oversees these huge programs.

Obama and his Democrats accuse Republicans of proposing Medicare changes that would dangerously raise healthcare costs for seniors, while Republicans claim the administration’s free-wheeling spending has pushed the nation’s debt to perilous levels.

Republicans in the House of Representatives have proposed giving seniors the option of having traditional Medicare or a competing plan through a government-run exchange. A previous Republican proposal from House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan sought to privatize Medicare, unleashing a storm of criticism from seniors and Democrats.

“Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age.” That quote could have come from this latest trustees’ report, given Americans’ worries about the future of Social Security and Medicare.

But it actually was part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s statement when he signed Social Security into law on August 14, 1935 with the aim of permanently protecting “against poverty-ridden old age.”

One comment

Expand Medicare to a one-payer system that will cover all but the Medicaid-eligible. That way everyone will be paying into it, including the young and healthy who are likely to need less medical care than the elderly. Then put a cap on the charges providers of service can be reimbursed for. Trying to do otherwise is like trying to empty the ocean with a bucket – the tide of charges keeps coming in. The insured are going broke because hospitals are making them pay, via their insurance companies, to treat the uninsured. Is common sense meeting more resistance than usual because this is an election year?